As known to those skilled in the art, when the chips of a wafer pasted on an elastic blue film which is supported by a wafer frame are to be selectively picked up one by one, those chips have to be moved to accessible positions for chip-picking device. In addition, the blue film should be stretched to increase the clearances between every two chips so that a selected chip can be easily picked up.
Major devices of a conventional chip supplying apparatus are mounted on a working table, as shown in FIG. 1.
FIG. 1 shows the circular working table and the wafer to be dealt with, and includes a rotating platform 101, an X-axial moving arm 102, a Y-axial moving arm 103, an air-compressing cylinder 104, a clutch arm 105, a transmitting gear 106, a plane-rotation control gear 107, a wafer frame 108, a blue film 109 for being placed thereon chips 110, a plurality of wafer-expanding gears 111, a transmitting belt 112, a film-expanding control gear 113, a plurality of film-expanding bolts 114, a film-expanding plywood 115 and a film-expanding ring 116. Firstly, the wafer frame 108 is placed on the working platform 101, and is precisely positioned for its X- and Y-axial positions by the X-axial moving arm 102 and the Y-axial moving arm 103. Then, the clutch arm 105 is driven by the air-compressing cylinder 104 to have the transmitting gear 106 engaged with the film-expanding control gear 113. When a motor is started, it drives the transmitting gear 106 to transmit the film-expanding control gear 113 and further transmit the film-expanding gears 111 to synchronously rotate under the connection by the transmitting belt 112. Meanwhile, the film-expanding bolts 114 rotate in response to the rotation of the film-expanding gears 111 to make the film-expanding plywood 115 and the film-expanding ring 116 have relative motion. For example, the film-expanding plywood 115 with the wafer frame 108 descends relative to the film-expanding ring 116 to a level substantially below the film-expanding ring 116 so that the blue film 109 within the wafer frame 108 can be stretched by the film-expanding ring 116. Accordingly, the clearances between every two chips op the stretched blue film 109 are increasing to facilitate the chip-picking operation of the chips. The plane-rotation control gear 107 in this apparatus is used for controlling the rotation of the rotating platform 101 and keeping the orientation of the working platform 101 during the stretch of the blue film 109.
The chip supplying apparatus described as above is generally used in the current semiconductor industrial and has shortcomings of:
1. rendering shakes of the rotating platform during the stretch of the blue film due to the dependence of the torque of the film-expanding and clutching mechanism on the rotational torque of the rotating platform, Such a situation may somewhat damage the chip supplying apparatus so as to require frequent maintenance. By the way, it is inconvenient for the rotating platform to be operated and maintained in case of over weight and volume and insufficient strength; PA1 2. occupying lots of space due to the arrangement of the X- and Y-axial moving arms beside the rotating platform; and PA1 3. hindering the loading/unloading of wafer frames into/out of the chip supplying apparatus because the X- and Y-axial moving arms are arranged beside the rotating platform.